Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 49.djvu/399

vidual, the rights of each, and the duties of each to the other. Society is a necessity. Being a necessity, it ought to be so organized as to continue and perform its functions with the least possible friction, and the greatest possible comfort and happiness to all who compose it. Hence the immeasurable importance of investigating, and of establishing in the minds of the rising generations an ethical adjustment of the parts of the social organism.

MASSAGE IN SPRAINS, BRUISES, AND DISLOCATIONS.

By DOUGLAS GRAHAM, M. D.

IN the Life and Letters of Mr. George P. Marsh, Volume I, page 219, is the following account of the brilliant success of the treatment of two sprains by a wild Arab: "There seemed, however, small chance that the proposed journey to Sinai, Petra, Jerusalem, etc., could be carried out. The season was already far advanced for desert travel; Mr. Marsh had seriously sprained his ankle at Karnac while carrying his wife through the great temple, and could not now walk without the assistance of two persons; and Miss Paine had been suffering from a somewhat similar sprain even before leaving Constantinople, and had profited little by the surgical skill of the Pranks at that place or in Egypt. The dragoman, though it was clearly for his interest that the journey should be made, admitted the impossibility of it under these circumstances, and gravely proposed that the two sprains should be cured at once by an Arab doctor of his own acquaintance. He entreated so earnestly and with such apparent confidence in his miracle-worker that a consultation was held with some of the oldest and most intelligent of the Frankish residents at Cairo, and, though no one would exactly take the responsibility of advising it, every one said that the evidence of these immediate cures was such that he should certainly try the experiment in his own case. Some, indeed, had tried it with entire success, and no one thought any harm could come of it.

"These considerations, added to an intense desire to see more of the mysterious East, decided the lame patients to call in the 'radoubeur.' So, the second morning after their installment in their hotel, Achmet presented himself, bringing with him the most extraordinary creature that can be well imagined. He was scarce five feet in height, and was clad in a single garment of blue cotton fastened about the waist with a leather belt. His old, withered face was lighted up by one eye only, and that seemed but half open, while nothing about his person would have led one to believe that the waters of the broad Nile were within reach. There